The Future Is Epic.

[Mr Mystery]

No, not epic. Epic. As in, Epic Scale.

This stuff.



Mmmmmmmmmyeah!

Epic. It's easily the besterest wargame ever made, and if you don't agree?

(may not be accurate)

In short....Epic does (well, did, to be fair) everything 40k currently tries to do. It's kind of like seeing a kid try to fill there absent father's shoes, only for Dad to walk in the front door years later, having been a John Doe Coma Victim for years, left alone, unknown and forlorn in a hospital bed.

You want Superheavies? We got everything from a Stormhammer to an Emperor Titan, and everything in between.

You want fliers? Thunderbolt and Marauder first kicked off in the Titan Legions era. And they had stuff to actually do, rather than act as really fast and slightly unwieldy skimmers.

You want to field a Tank Company? Knock yourself out. You won't be the first!

You want amusing damage results on Titans instead of 'ping, ping, ping, ping ASPLODE'? Try shooting them in the MIU. That's always good for a laugh. As is taking a leg off at the hip. Check out the God Machine. It's fallen, and it can't get it up.

You want really, really big games? No probs. It's almost as if that's what Epic is designed for.

You want a game where your infantry actually matter? Yep. Believe it or not, that's Epic. Take and hold buildings! Take and hold those incredibly important objectives. Very few games of Epic were ever won without infantry support and the proper application thereof - whether it was the noble sacrifice of mobbing an enemy Titan to allow yours to scarper clear, or even (and this is my favourite) using them to board an Emperor Titan and blow it's legs off next turn? Infantry are your diminutive men and women.

You may have noticed, I have a near tectonic relationship with Epic. I absolutely love it. Always have, always will. Even Epic 40,000, it's weakest incarnation, was still a reasonably good game.

And now it's coming back. And, if it pans out as it did in the past, I can quite easily foresee it over taking 40k in popularity. As I attempted to illustrate above, all the things 40k has grown to do over the past few years, Epic naturally does better. Here's some examples to further drive my possibly-by-now-meandering point home.

In 40k - Your opponent takes a Knight or other Superheavy. You didn't plan for this. You've been trumped.

In Epic - Your opponent takes a really big Titan. Don't worry, you'll be able to deal with it. Maybe not quite as quickly if you had your own, but strip off it's Void Shields and then shoot it in the face. Sooner or later, it's going down.

In 40k - Drat, drat and double drat! My opponent has overdosed on Fliers, and my Codex has extremely limited, or worse, no, AA capacity, let alone the army I've chosen to field. Well done. Checkmate. Hope you're proud of yourself, and I'm sure you Mum tells you you're cool.

In Epic - Gah! Accursed Fliers! EAT FIRST FIRE, FLYBOY! Dakkadakkadakkadakka



40k has tried, desperately, to fill the void Epic left in it's enforced absence. And don't get me wrong. When everyone is of a mood, really big games of 40k are a hoot. But like a night on the pop in Nottingham bracketed by visits to the Red Hot World Buffet to first line the stomach and then kill off the hangover, it's not something you can do every day, and for the most part, nor would you want to.

And so 40k has mutated beyond it's natural boundaries. Consider the fun challenge of a proper, dense terrain City Fight, or even better, the small force, sodding expensive board, giggles of Zone Mortalis where the biggest nasty you're likely to meet (and even then likely straight into range of Johnny Melta) is a Dreadnought of some description. That to me is when 40k seriously comes into it's own.

But now? Now Epic is coming back in the form of Adeptus Titanicus Horus Heresy. Apparently, the scale is going from 6mm classic, to a shiny new 8mm - or in other words, everything is getting 33% embiggened on the resizograph, so sadly us old duffers with Epic armies gathering dust somewhere can't necessarily transpose those straight across (unless everyone is doing that, in which case Happy Days...eeehhhhhhhhh!) And that means all the things that 40k is doing at the moment that, let's be honest, the system struggles with....are about to be done much, much better.

Of course, right now nobody knows (apart from those working on the game, natch) what the rules are going to be like, or what sort of scope they're aiming for. So various and sundry of my rather excitable points above may not pan out (like First Fire, part of the orders system. Might come back, might not. I hope it does, as that really made Epic for me)

But any game which has 'well, Legionnes Titanicus, one of them each' as it's starting point probably isn't gonna go far wrong in satisfying for those with a craving for warfare on a truly ludicrous scale - even at Forgeworld prices (and even then, this is part of the Specialist Games Revival, or GW Year One as it's starting to feel. Or perhaps GW New 52 type thing. I dunno. I'm not hip and rap with the kids, yo, so who knows if this'll be plastic or resin kits for the most part? Again, probably some dude within FW overseeing this project. But not us, that's what I'm trying to get at)

So where does that leave 40k?

Well, I don't imagine for a moment we'll see the end of plastic Super Heavy Kits being available. Apocalypse is, after all, a total blast to play, and even in standard sized 40k game, taking on a Super Heavy with prior warning can prove a very satisfying challenge of your ability. But as a wider community? Will we see 40k shrink a bit to it's natural comfort zone - 1,500ish games in dense terrain, leave the Big Toys at home. I don't know.

But what do you think?

Oh, and just to be clear.....ATHH is the beginning - a toe in the water if you will. When it's successful (yup, I'm that confident. I know a lot of lapsed gamers, dusty old souls every last man jack of them, and they're all aquiver with excite for this, and have deep pockets....), we can expect Xenos and non-Heresy era stuff to come along in time.

[Erik Setzer]

Epic is where the epic battles should be. And it needs to be 6mm to allow for even larger battles. They tried to make 40K too much like 28mm Epic. Let Epic take its rightful place as the arena of massive battles in the 41st millennium, and rework 40K back to being a more small-scale (though can scale up if people want) kind of game.

[Mr Mystery]

Pretty much - but I'm flexible on the exact scale (as said above, sad old gits like me playing each other can still use our 6mm stuff )

I see no reason why 40k shouldn't have Knight models for example, but for the most part those should be handed by Epic, because they have less of an impact.

[CoffeeGrunt]

Hmm, 8mm is close enough to 10mm that we can use our Dropzone terrain at the local store.

[40kGamer]

EPIC is the bestest! :P I'm quite excited for 5th edition EPIC but am concerned with the expected scale change reducing the amount of toys the field can hold.

[JamesP]

Epic is amazing. I got hooked when my best mate bought the original Adeptus Titanicus and have been playing it on and off ever since.

I'm really pleased that it is coming back.

As I have finally cajoled and threatened myself into finishing painting my huge pile of unpainted Epic Orks, I will be sad if I can't use my 6mm horde in the new edition but I'll work something out.

My main concern is that my Gargants, including my WIP mega-gargant, will be really out of scale compared to any new 8mm titans and other large war machines. Troops would still work, they and smaller vehicles can be rebased. But war machines?

[Caitsidhe]

Epic is far superior to 40K as a game, and to be honest I've seen more of it being played lately than anything else.

[Mr Mystery]

But where do people feel this will leave 40k?

I don't know about your local area, but my lot aren't especially shy about getting the big toys. I currently have 4 Knights, other friends have Titans and Superheavy tanks - with Epic providing a perhaps more appropriate arena for those kits, will their appeal beyond 'large, gorgeous kit' wane? Similarly, with Epic providing a better arena for really colossal scale battles, will people feel the need to collect such large armies for 40k?

If I'm honest, I can't see a successful roll out of Epic not hitting 40k. Quite aside from us all having our own set hobby budgets, if GW see sales of the big 40k stuff decline, how might they seek to make that up?

Could we see Zone Mortalis boards plasticificated? It's a great setting and thanks to it's typically smaller forces, easier for people to join with us (as a community we're pretty solid with helping newcomers, but there's always TFG who scents blood and unleashes his Knights against a Macragge set collection). And it's an appealing prospect for a board - spesh as it can play out quite satisfactorily at 4'x4'

Is there anything else you think GW might do to make the most of 40k being relieved of Colossal Battle Duty to keep sales up?

[CoffeeGrunt]

Speaking anecdotally, 40K is also ready tanking for precisely that reason locally, and Dropzone replaced it mostly because of that reason. I.e., I can carry a 3000pt UCM force in a GW Skirmish Case, which previously held a couple of Kill Teams without vehicles. Gameplay is probably the biggest factor, but I've heard more than one person be pleased about how much easier it is to transport and store a 10mm scale game.

On top of that, there's nothing in Dropzone that's as impossible to beat for the unprepared as a Knight list, and everyone has relatively-equal access to the usual trifecta of Anti-Tank, Anti-Infantry and Anti-Air. So long as an Epic reboot learns similar lessons by giving everyone the ability to deal with threats in slightly-different but more-or-less equal ways, retaining the flavour of each faction and making gameplay feel fast and punchy while still being a titanic engagement, then yeah, it'll be a hit over here.

Alternate Activations would help a lot, though. They really do make games more enjoyable, IMO.

[Mr Mystery]

I'd agree with that (not the anecdotal stuff, I honestly don't know anyone who plays DZC locally).

But the bit about 'impossible for the unprepared'. Epic traditionally hasn't had that problem. Titans were hard, but far from unkillable, and if kitted out for Titan Hunting pretty useless at anything else. Fliers were useful, but even though you ideally needed dedicated AA units (Hydras, Doomdiver Magna Cannons, Firestorm and that Squat Cannon) they weren't that deadly that everyone packed AA as a matter of course - instead they were largely precision weapons used to strike where your opponent thought himself safe.

Again, stripped back, 40k's issues are dramatically lessened, and the game balances more on skill of strategy than skill of list building.

I don't think for a second 40k will die because of Epic. It didn't happen before. But I hope it might allow the designers the chance to refocus the game on what it's base rule set does very well - fast games with a decent sized army, where the battlefield is part of your arsenal. By all means keep the big stuff in 40k - but perhaps as expansions ala the new Fliers book (dunno if that's optional or what, haven't got it or looked into it. AoS is eating my cash at the moment!)